On the sleepers again: Lokomotiv won the Gagarin Cup for the second year in a row

The Gagarin Cup winner was again Yaroslavl "Locomotive". On May 21, the Railwaymen won the sixth match of the playoff finals against Ak Bars Kazan (1-0) and won the entire series (4:2). Thus, the club won the KHL main trophy for the second year in a row. Even the loss of the head coach that happened after the last triumph did not prevent him from doing this.

We stayed with Bob

Last year's Gagarin Cup triumph was the Yaroslavl team's first in the history of the KHL and the first championship in 22 years. Before that, the club won the Super League three times — in 1997 under the name Torpedo, and then in 2002 and 2003 as Lokomotiv. However, after the creation of the KHL in 2008, the main trophy of the league was not conquered by the "railwaymen" for a long time.

In the KHL's debut season (2008/09), they reached the finals, where they lost to Ak Bars in seven matches (3:4). After that, we didn't get that close to the title for another 15 years. At the same time, Lokomotiv has always remained one of the best clubs in the country for training young players. The pupils of the Yaroslavl school reached the main team by the dozens and gained a foothold in it.

Lokomotiv, being inferior in budget to CSKA Moscow, SKA St. Petersburg and a number of other clubs, regularly imposed a struggle on the favorites, but failed to reach the championship. The development of the team was also affected by the 2011 plane crash, in which the main team of the club was killed. Nevertheless, the Yaroslavl team recovered quite quickly and reached the semi-finals of the playoffs three years later.

But the leapfrog with the coaches made it difficult to take a step further. Everything began to change in the fall of 2021, when Igor Nikitin, who had previously won the Gagarin Cup in 2019 with CSKA, was appointed head coach.

In two and a half years, he built a team that reached the finals in 2024, but lost there to Metallurg Magnitogorsk (0:4). Then, reinforced by the star striker Alexander Radulov, she finally won the first Gagarin Cup in her history in 2025.

But after that, Nikitin and almost the entire staff unexpectedly left for CSKA.

This story has discouraged the hockey public. It seemed that after this, Lokomotiv had no chance of staying at the top. But the club's long-term president, Yuri Yakovlev, who has held this position since 1990, found something to answer. He managed to keep almost the entire squad. But most importantly, he managed to find a figure comparable to Nikitin for the post of head coach, signing a one-year contract with Bob Hartley. The famous Canadian specialist won trophies in all the leagues in which he worked. In particular, in 2001 he won the Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche, and 20 years later he won the Gagarin Cup with Avangard.

The problem was that the 65-year-old coach had not worked since 2022, when he left Omsk. He lived with his family in Canada, was involved in business, and sometimes came to Avangard to conduct master classes at the local academy. Hartley has repeatedly stressed that he is not going to coach again. But Yakovlev persuaded him.

However, few people hid that Bob was returning to coaching for only a year. In addition, he arrived without his key assistant Jacques Cloutier, one of the key creators of success with Avangard. The season has started neither shakily nor shakily for the "railwaymen". The results in the first half of the regular season were unstable, so in November and December there were constant rumors about the coach's resignation.

As a result, Dmitry Ryabykin, who had worked with Hartley for all four seasons at Avangard and was responsible for most of the work in Yaroslavl, was fired. Instead, they took Canadian Mike Pelino, who collaborated with Bob in his first season in Omsk, when the club reached the finals of the 2019 Gagarin Cup.

Through turbulence

Of Hartley's permanent assistants, only coach Sergey Zvyagin remained. Nevertheless, in the second half of the season, Lokomotiv gained momentum and finished first in the Western Conference regular season. In the playoffs, the Railwaymen confidently passed Spartak Moscow in five matches (4:1) and Ufa Salavat Yulaev in four (4:0).

At that moment, Igor Nikitin's CSKA crashed out of the Gagarin Cup in the second round. He lost in five matches to Avangard (1-4), with whom Lokomotiv had to play in the semifinals.

At first, it seemed that this would be the end of the matter. Omsk, which was considered the favorite, led 3-1 after four matches and was one step away from reaching the finals. It seemed that with their victory at home in the fifth game (4-0), Lokomotiv only postponed the inevitable, but then accomplished the incredible, winning the next two games 3-2 away and at home.

In both cases, the winning goals were scored in the middle of the second overtime, and during the meetings Yaroslavl lost by two goals (0:2 in the sixth match and 1:3 in the seventh). Moreover, in the sixth game, Hartley's team burned 0:2 33 seconds before the end of the meeting.

In the final, Lokomotiv got to Ak Bars, which did not start the season very well, but improved along the way and got a chance to take the Gagarin Cup for the first time since 2018. After the first four matches, the score in the series was 2-2, but Yaroslavl convincingly won the fifth game 4-1.

The final reversal

Ak Bars needed to win in order to move the series into the final seventh match, which was scheduled to take place in Yaroslavl on May 23. The meeting in Kazan caused a wide stir. As expected, Tatneft Arena was filled to the end. It was attended by two main stars of Ak Bars since the three victories in the Gagarin Cup — Alexey Morozov and Danis Zaripov.

Morozov, as the current president of the KHL, probably had to present the trophy to the winner on this day. Moreover, Ilsur Metshin, the Mayor of Kazan, and Mikhail Evraev, the Governor of the Yaroslavl Region, came to the match.

In the fourth game, Georgy Ivanov, one of the key central strikers of Lokomotiv, was injured. Hartley had to make changes in the ranks, as well as return Pavel Kraskovsky, who had not played since the end of April, to the squad.

As a result, Kraskovsky scored two assists in the sixth game. It was with Pavel's pressure at the backboard that Lokomotiv's first goal began at the beginning of the fifth minute. Ak Bars lost the puck, it was picked up by Nikita Kiryanov, who passed Egor Surin, who shot the goal of the hosts.

Ilya Safonov could have equalized in the 13th minute, but his shot from a meter turned out to be inaccurate. And soon Surin did a double. After bouncing off the faceplate for a nickel, Kraskovsky shot at goal, goalkeeper Timur Bilyalov saved Ak Bars, but the puck bounced off him to Surin, who doubled the advantage of Lokomotiv.

The score of 0:2 could be considered catastrophic for Kazan, since Yaroslavl rarely misses such an advantage. During the second period, Anvar Gatiyatulin's team tried to put pressure on the Railwaymen and even created good chances for a goal, but goalkeeper Daniil Isaev saved his team.

In the third period, seven and a half minutes before the end of regular time, thanks to Maxim Shalunov's goal, Lokomotiv led 3-0. Two minutes later, Nathan Todd scored one goal. And less than three minutes before the siren, Nikita Lyamkin opened the visitors' gates, reviving the intrigue in this game. In the remaining time, Ak Bars almost did not let the opponent out of his zone and threw well a couple of times, but the guests fought back and won.

Lokomotiv won the Gagarin Cup for the second time in its history. Ak Bars, CSKA, Metallurg have won this trophy three times, Dynamo Moscow and SKA twice, Salavat Yulaev and Avangard once each. If you count all the post-Soviet trophies (the Interethnic Hockey League in 1992-1996 and the Super League in 1997-2008), then Lokomotiv now has five championships. In this indicator, it is second only to Dynamo Moscow and Metallurg.